ACCC 'should get power over fuel prices'

Mr Rudd on Sunday said he would create a national petrol commission within the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), under the direction of a special commissioner.

"We cannot understand for the life of us why Mr Howard and Mr Costello refused to give a written direction to the ACCC to undertake what's called formal monitoring of the pricing policies of the big oil companies," he told the Ten Network.

Instead of the ACCC relying on its informal price monitoring powers and using only publicly available information, Labor would provide specific powers to the ACCC to get into the companies and check their documentation.

"We will make sure they use those formal powers which are currently only available if the prime minister or the treasurer direct them," he said.

"They can then get inside companies and get inside, if necessary, relevant documents on pricing behaviour."

The fuel companies are under fire for raising prices before the Queen's Birthday long weekend despite a fall in the international market price for unleaded petrol.

Bowser prices in Sydney went as high as 143.9 cents per litre on Friday morning before dropping about four cents by the afternoon.

In Melbourne the highest price around midday on Friday was 139.9 cents. The average prices in both cities were around 135-137 cents.

Mr Rudd stopped short of backing calls for the ACCC to gain phone tapping powers to monitor the oil companies.

He said he was always concerned about the implications of extraordinary powers for civil liberties,

"What we can do is move from these passive powers which are currently being exercised by the ACCC to the active powers within the Act through the treasurer providing a direction," he said.

Mr Rudd said the ACCC legislation clearly contained extraordinary powers which were not being employed.

"We think that is the best way to bring pressure to bear every day on a continuing basis on the big oil companies," he said.

Labor communications spokesman Stephen Conroy said the recent court decision involving the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and petrol companies was in his view a rogue judgment which imposed a new interpretation of the law.

"You had three or four companies confess to price fixing behaviour. You had enormous evidence of contact between these petrol stations," he told ABC television.

"And yet the judge ruled that he couldn't see any conspiracy."

Senator Conroy said the ACCC now had to reassess how they could actually prosecute.

"What we want to see from Graeme Samuel and the ACCC is, after they have had a talk about it, whether or not they will appeal, whether or not there needs to be law changes," he said.